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Patagonia by Subaru: Six AWD cars in the prettiest place on earth

South America and Subaru are a surprisingly good match

July 12, 2016

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In Patagonia, Unimogs trundle along with little houses bolted to their backs like backpacks. Their occupants leave their lives, and most of what you and I call modern conveniences, and spend a lot of money to camp and dork around playing explorer in a world that’s mostly been explored. After being given a little glimpse of the place they drive their big trucks to, I’m sure they’re either the smartest or luckiest people in the world.

If you look at South America as a deformed letter P, Patagonia is the part of Argentina and Chile that would make up the descender. If you haven’t been there, I am as confident as anyone who hasn’t been everywhere can be in saying that you’ve never seen anything like it. Jagged mountain peaks explode up from the steppe. Turquoise glaciers, rivers and vast lakes luminesce in the daylight. Andean condors soar overhead on 10 feet of black feathers while 50-pound salmon leap into the air.

Driving through it presents you with scene after scene that you have absolutely no frame of reference for. It’s like Earth’s highlight reel: all the most spectacular physical forms the planet has to offer, pressed into an area that you can drive across. That’s why the Unimog guys give up most of the comforts of modern life to tool around out there.

I saw it because, Subaru flew me and a handful of car writers to South America so we could drive through Patagonia to Tierra Del Fuego.

Photo by Michael Shaffer

After a night in Buenos Aires and a couple hours on a plane, we were at a hotel, being issued six Subarus that we’d drive from El Calafate to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. They were Crosstrek XVs, Outbacks and Foresters, totally stock and fresh off a stint in the Chilean press fleet. Full reviews for each of the cars we drove are hyperlinked in the previous sentence, but if you're totally unfamiliar with them, here's a little background:

Since it arrived on the market, the Forester has gone from small, slammed crossover/wagon to relatively small, relatively less-slammed crossover. It offers a touch more interior room compared to its more-wagony counterparts, and the taller, more upright roof provides better outward visibility. There’s also more room in the luggage compartment. It drives a little heavier than other Subarus, and it rolls and pitches a bit more, too, but it’s perfectly at home in the dirt.

The best non-WRX, non-BRZ Subaru is the XV Crosstrek. Because it’s practical and—when equipped with a manual—fun to drive, I frequently recommended the little wagon to outdoorsy types who just need basic transportation but aren’t quite ready to assume the final, charred, joyless crossover-owner form that awaits us all. The one we borrowed for this trip was, sadly, equipped with a CVT, so acceleration could best be described as “measured. But it was still sprung tall enough to bound over cattle bars at 80 mph and stiff enough that the unloading of the suspension doesn’t make it scary to steer when you come down.

The CVT was less of a handicap for the Outback 3.6R Limited that we drove. The thing that most people hate about driving a CVT-equipped car is listening to the engine rev while waiting for acceleration. Generally speaking, the Outback’s CVT performed more like a conventional automatic—only much smoother. It’s not quick by modern standards, but it doesn’t feel drastically underpowered.Probably more notably, the 3.6R does a surprisingly credible impersonation of a luxury wagon. The exterior and interior are attractive and coherent. The seats are covered in high-quality perforated leather, and the steering wheel and shifter get nice cow skin, as well. It looks and feels like a car that belongs in the $35,000-$40,000 price range, even if you can’t quite option one to the $40K mark.

Subaru Crosstrek XV in Patagonia Photo by Michael Shaffer

By the time I got to Patagonia, Autoweek had already driven and reviewed every car I was supposed to drive. So, I suppose we were supposed to look at the trip as an opportunity to see how stock cars handled rough conditions. And, had we installed some more durable tires, or just been a hair less dumb, we could’ve made the whole trip in total comfort stopping only for gas in any of these cars. (Though you’d have to take a slightly different route, we relied on support trucks for refueling a couple of times.) Across the board, they managed to stay surprisingly quiet and comfortable over washboard roads save for the sound of stones striking the undercarriage. Despite the fact that they’d been through the wringer of press-fleet duty once already, I didn’t evenhear any squeaking or rattling from the interior trim. The only real mechanical difficulty we encountered was a power-steering problem in one of the Foresters. It didn’t keep us from making progress.

No matter how many windshields we cracked (every last one), my fellow idiots rarely allowed the car ahead adequate space to throw big rocks harmlessly. A lot of people don’t know this, but I'm told you can lose your automotive journalism license if you don’t stay right on the other guy’s bumper at all times during press drives.

Photo by Michael Shaffer

Our group ate up tires. I’m not sure how, as I never saw one fail in person. I know that each of our cars was equipped with a full-size spare, in addition to the spare that came with the car. I also know there were two support trucks each with a small supply of tires. And I know that on the last day or so of the trip, we were warned that we were fresh out of full-size spares. I heard that some of the tire damage resulted from the massive, often sharp rocks that make up the gravel road we ran on for most of the trip. Other anecdotal evidence suggests that at least one tire was damaged in the process of whipping shitties.

A foglight also vibrated out of its housing, and there were plenty of stone chips and scratches. But overall, the cars happily took everything we dished out.

This wasn’t a hardcore overlanding expedition, but as far as press events go, we put the cars through a lot. I’d equate it to doing several years worth of trailhead seeking, camping and two-tracking—the kind of off-roading most weekend warriors really do—all at once. Truthfully, a lot of cars are totally capable of doing that. I grew up doing it in all manner of automobiles, from minivans to a 911. But ripping over loose gravel with AWD, plenty of ground clearance and suspension travel to spare is a lot more fun than tiptoeing carefully, worried about what might break.

That’s the fundamental appeal of the Subarus we drove across Patagonia: the idea that they enable you to go out and have an adventure. Part of that is marketing, but plenty of people actually use them that way. When you do, it’s easy to develop feelings of affection for them.